All of us are looking for guidance on how to use and interact with AI. There’s no shortage of content that aims to help you use AI efficiently and productively. But what about content geared toward helping us use AI well, not in the competent sense but in the moral sense?
We all feel tempted to look for a simple list of rules of engagement with AI, but I’m convinced virtue formation is more important. Rules are rigid while virtues are adaptive, able to respond differently to varied situations. Think of it like the difference between practicing scales and playing music. The scales are formative and an important part of learning note progressions. But musicians don’t learn scales just to play scales; instead, the scales form them into skilled musicians able to play and improvise.
Similarly, one challenge with AI is its wide range of applications and the varied contexts in which it’s deployed. Therefore, any rules-based approach is going to struggle to be comprehensive or flexible enough to be helpful. However, inhabiting certain core virtues enables us to go out and not merely rehearse scales but play—that is, thoughtfully apply those virtues to a wide range of circumstances.
Here are four vital virtues we need to inhabit to stay human in our AI world.
1. Fellowship: Community vs. Individuality
We’re made in the image of a God who is inherently relational as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, we’re made for community. Community flourishes when we orient ourselves around others, and it dies when we withdraw and focus on ourselves (Eph. 4:3–7).
In the New Testament, many virtues are important for community, but a key word that captures this other-person-centered perspective is koinonia, which is often translated as “fellowship” but can also be rendered “other-person-centered love” or “solidarity.”
A key way sin operates is to make us become turned in on ourselves—incurvatus in se, as Augustine memorably phrased it. Such a posture focuses primarily on our needs and desires rather than our influence on and need for others. We capture something of this vice when we say of someone, “He thinks the world revolves around him.” Never a compliment! And yet, hypertailored browsing experiences and social media apps aim to make us the kind of person we dislike.
With AI driving the algorithms behind these dynamics, the extent of the tailoring to our personal preferences will only become more addictive. This will fuel increasing individualism at an even more alarming rate than in the past 20 years. If you think of social media as the drug fueling individualism, then with AI, that drug’s addictive nature has been made significantly more potent, like digital heroin.
If you think of social media as the drug fueling individualism, then with AI, that drug’s addictive nature has been made significantly more potent, like digital heroin.
In contrast, fellowship shapes how we see ourselves and those around us; we need one another. In Philemon (a letter that focuses on koinonia), Paul writes of the joy and encouragement he receives from the love of others in community (v. 7). He doesn’t see himself only as an individual but as someone who needs others to flourish and whose presence and actions profoundly affect those around him.
More than ever, this command is vital: “[Do] not [give] up meeting together . . . but [encourage] one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:25, NIV). The regular, weekly gathering of God’s new community united by a common love has arguably never been more important than for us today. In this community, we meet others who are profoundly different, who enable us to break out of our AI-driven echo chambers, and whom we put first rather than seeking our own interests.
At least two principles flow from this virtue. First, intentionally spend time in cross-generational and cross-political communities (e.g., a sports team; a hobby; or, best yet, a local church) where you interact with and learn to value people who are different from you. Second, have a regular commitment where you serve others and get no benefit from it apart from the joy of service and relationship.
2. Presence: Embodiment vs. Virtual Living
Gnosticism was a heresy that arose particularly in the second century. It claimed that the material world was evil and debased and that we should instead aspire toward a higher, spiritual reality. Today, there’s a growing gnosticism around AI. This is seen in how AI enthusiasts both downplay the importance of embodiment and elevate AI’s abilities.
However, as human beings, we’re uniquely embodied. It’s not possible to separate our minds, personalities, and souls from our bodies (even though many sci-fi books and films do this). Our bodies are the medium through which we engage with and understand the world. In contrast, AI isn’t embodied. It doesn’t perceive the world, engage with the world, or understand the world as we normally use those words, however effectively it may mimic doing so.
From its beginning, Christianity has been highly embodied: God made bodies as part of the original creation that he declared good (Gen. 1:31). Jesus, as God, became flesh (John 1:14). The future hope is a new creation and an embodied existence (Rev. 21:3). Therefore, we need to be wary of the growing trend to try to live life online.
Simone Weil was one of the great 20th-century thinkers on embodiment, and she emphasized the importance of “attention” to the physical and our bodies. It’s unsurprising that as more people engage in activities online, the therapeutic benefits of presence and attention are becoming increasingly important. Trends like online avatars, trying to “relate” to an AI chatbot as a person, and excessive time online threaten to dehumanize us by moving us away from our embodied nature.
In contrast, we need to cultivate the virtue of being present. Two principles may help us express this virtue. First, make every effort to show up to events and to allow online engagement to complement—not replace—embodied events. Second, when you’re at an event, be all there. Switch off your phone or put it on “Do not disturb” so you can be attentive to where you are and who you’re with, rather than being distracted.
3. Patience: Growth vs. Efficiency
AI offers considerable efficiency benefits, but as Alan Noble reminds us, efficiency isn’t a fruit of the Spirit. Just as we know that fast food generally isn’t as healthy as food prepared using slower, more traditional methods, we need to ask when efficiency is helpful and when it isn’t. In particular, AI offers considerable shortcuts in forming a slide deck, writing an email, creating a video, and many other applications.
However, sometimes taking the quickest route precludes the path of growth, and growth is often slower and requires patience. Consider how we use apps to navigate cities. They help us get from A to B more quickly, but if we use turn-by-turn navigation, research has shown that the neural networks in our brains, formed by noticing landmarks and navigating by sight, aren’t engaged in the same way. As a result, we’re less able to navigate the city and less oriented to our surroundings.
For most of us, this doesn’t matter much, and we’re prepared to sacrifice our navigational skills for the ease and efficiency of the apps. However, consider a college student who overuses AI for her coursework. She may be able to complete it more quickly and (probably) get better results. But even if she isn’t cheating by using AI, emerging research shows she’ll leave college much less formed in the skills the course was designed to develop (writing, structuring an argument, etc.). The efficiency AI delivers has come at the cost of her growth and development.
It’s not difficult to think of many other areas in life where this is happening. AI may make us efficient, but we’re being stunted in our growth as a result.
In contrast, God takes his time with our growth. We wish God could perfect our sanctification instantaneously, just as we’re fully justified in Christ the moment we believe. But according to his sovereign wisdom, he takes his time, growing us from one degree of glory to another through an often inefficient path that requires his grace and our patience (2 Cor. 3:18).
AI may make us efficient, but we’re being stunted in our growth as a result.
Even Jesus needed to grow (though not in character, since he was always sinless). Luke memorably comments that Jesus “became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him” (2:40, NIV). If Jesus needed to grow and be patient before he was ready to fulfill his mission as a mature man, how much more do we need to be patient rather than focusing on efficiency that may come at the expense of our development.
Two principles flow from being patient in this AI age. First, resolve never to cheat or plagiarize using AI, and be appropriately transparent if you use AI for source material. Second, commit to not using AI in ways that prevent growth in vital areas. Slow, difficult growth is better than efficient, easy stagnation or regression.
4. Faithfulness: Truth vs. Sensationalism
Social media became the top source of news in the United States in 2025. This follows a wider trend where news has merged with opinions and entertainment to create “infotainment”. Add the dopamine hits generated by short, sensationalized posts that rise up in our news feeds (in the place of long-form posts), and this results in a growing difficulty to discern what’s true from what has been sensationalized.
Misinformation and the possibility of being manipulated by propaganda are also increasing. Deepfake videos are increasingly problematic as AI improves at imitating human speech and producing lifelike content. The trends toward sensationalism and misinformation are fueling an increasingly feverish online atmosphere, a lack of nuance, and the movement of large parts of the population into extreme political views.
Some have tried to address this by appealing to pragmatism. In 2024, Katherine Maher, the current NPR CEO and former Wikimedia Foundation CEO, argued,
I’m certain that the truth exists for you and probably for the person sitting next to you. But this may not be the same truth. . . . So we all have different truths. . . . We can come to cooperative and productive conversations around disagreement and decision making without using one shared truth as our baseline.
She claimed we should become less concerned with what’s true and more concerned with getting along and working together.
Pragmatism may seem superficially attractive, but her views are worryingly naive and historically short-sighted. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn languished for years in a Russian gulag because he stood against the lies and propaganda of Stalin’s regime. He famously quoted a proverb saying, “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.” The history of 20th-century totalitarian regimes warns us that when truth wanes, people become susceptible to manipulation, relationships fragment, and society crumbles.
In contrast, healthy relationships, which in turn sustain cohesive societies, require bonds of trust to flourish, and trust cannot be maintained without truth. This is what the virtue of faithfulness is about. In 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Paul urges us to “test everything; hold fast what is good.” The context may be about prophecies, but the principle applies widely.
To perceive truth amid a world of half-truths, propaganda, and lies, we need to become discerning. This is a skill honed over time by cultivating depth and reading long-form (and in context), not just seizing on the pithy and sensational. Faithfulness also grows by cultivating humility through encountering a range of views, not just staying in our echo chambers. Faithfulness encourages us to seek wisdom and not foolishly dive into controversies.
Faithfulness encourages us to seek wisdom and not foolishly dive into controversies.
AI can be a helpful aid in this pursuit. For example, we can ask it to provide a range of perspectives on an issue, ask what key texts might be required reading, or use it to summarize broad arguments as preparation for a deeper dive. But, equally, AI can fuel misinformation and sensationalism if we’re merely using it to drive “attention” in users, or it may give us the illusion of knowing about something just because we’ve read a ChatGPT summary (which itself isn’t always accurate).
Here are two principles to aid faithfulness in our time. First, steel-man an argument rather than straw-man it. If you can’t show the flaws in someone’s argument even as you make his case as clearly and strongly as possible, then perhaps he may be right and you wrong. Second, seek depth and thoughtfulness, not shallow sensationalism. If something in a short post piques your interest, see if a long form version exists and read it. Also, read what runs counter to your natural bias to get a balanced perspective.
The Gospel Coalition